Description
An Observer Best Debut of the YearA Granta Best Young British NovelistI loved this book' JULIA ARMFIELDExhilarating' MONICA HEISEY''Astonishing'' ANDREA LAWLOR''Should be on everyone''s summer reading list'' iNEWSA powerful, sensual novel of the forbidden love between a young woman and the headmaster's wife, unfolding across a single a heatwave summer.In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a young Australian woman arrives to take up the antiquated role of matron'. There she meets Mrs S, the headmaster's wife, a woman who is her polar opposite: assured, sophisticated, a paragon of femininity.Over the course of a long, restless heatwave, the matron finds herself irresistibly drawn ever closer into the older woman's world with their unspoken desire blooming into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer begins to fade, both know that a choice must finally be made.Atmospheric and dar